only witness who accounted for Sessions’s whereabouts stated that Sessions may 633 have spoken to the press after the event but then departed for Capitol Hill. Saunders recalled, based in part on a food-related request he received from a Campaign staff member, that Trump left the hotel a few minutes after the speech 634 to go to the airport. c. Jeff Sessions’s Post-Speech Interactions with CNI In the wake of Sessions’s confirmation hearings as Attorney General, questions arose about whether Sessions’s campaign-period interactions with CNI apart from the Mayflower speech included any additional meetings with Ambassador Kislyak or involved Russian-related matters. With respect to Kislyak contacts, on May 23, 2016, Sessions attended CNI’s Distinguished 635 Service Award dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. Sessions attended a pre-dinner reception and was seated at one of two head 636 tables for the event. A seating chart prepared by Saunders indicates that Sessions was scheduled to be seated next to Kislyak, who appears to have 637 responded to the invitation by indicating he would attend the event. Sessions, however, did not remember seeing, speaking with, or sitting next to Kislyak at 638 the dinner. Although CNI board member Charles Boyd said he may have 639 seen Kislyak at the dinner, Simes, Saunders, and Jacob Heilbrunn—editor of the National Interest—all had no recollection of seeing Kislyak at the May 23 640 event. Kislyak also does not appear in any of the photos from the event that the Office obtained. In the summer of 2016, CNI organized at least two dinners in Washington, 641 D.C. for Sessions to meet with experienced foreign policy professionals. The dinners included CNI-affiliated individuals, such as Richard Burt and Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq and the person 642 who had introduced Trump before the April 27, 2016 foreign-policy speech. 643 Khalilzad also met with Sessions one-on-one separately from the dinners. At the dinners and in the meetings, the participants addressed U.S. relations with Russia, including how U.S. relations with NATO and European countries 644 affected U.S. policy toward Russia. But the discussions were not exclusively
Mueller Report PDF Page 129 Page 131